Cet article est aussi disponible en français. This article contains quite a few technical terms, which I will explain these in the following paragraphs, those that are already familiar with these terms may skip to the next section. A basic understanding of linux and it’s desktop environments is assumed. Server side decorations (SSD) is the term for when when the application’s titlebar is drawn by the system and client side decorations (CSD) is the term for when the applications draws it’s own titlebar. KDE prefers the former, while GNOME prefers the latter. KDE and most other desktop environments supports both, while GNOME only supports CSD.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/57302675

an article explaining why GNOME should support SSD, but also arguing against the reasons often given for why they shouldn’t

If someone could repost this to r/GNOME I would appreciate it, since I don’t have a reddit account.

  • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
    361·
    2 days ago

    The whole notion of CSDs is a blueprint example of what happens when UI designers try to think things through too hard. They come up with grand solutions to trivial problems that are so poorly thought through that they create even bigger problems.

    Realistically, nobody is going rewrite their entire application just because of what a tiny cabal of Gnome developers think. Just read this post that was linked elsewhere in this thread. At the end, Tobias is basically arguing that people should go out there and harass the developers of all Linux desktop applications (including the entire KDE project!) to follow through on this ridiculous idea:

    Thus, our goal is for as many apps as possible to have the following properites [sic]

    • No title bar
    • Native-looking close/maximize/minimize icons
    • Respects the setting for showing/hiding minimize and maximize
    • Respects the setting for buttons to be on the left/right side of the window

    Which apps are affected? Basically, all applications not using GTK3 (and a few that do use GTK3). That includes GTK2, Qt, and Electron apps.

    If that alone doesn’t alert people of how out-of-touch the Gnome developers are, then I don’t know what would.

    • Ferk@lemmy.ml
      2·
      8 hours ago

      They justify the rejection of SSD because it isn’t part of the core Wayland protocol and at the same time push client apps for the “minimize” and “maximize” buttons (along with respecting some settings) despite it also not being part of the core protocol and it being only possible through extensions. There’s a ton of tiling compositors that don’t even have any concept of minimize/maximize, so why should this be required of every client app?

      It feels backwards to ask the app developers to be the ones adding the UI for whatever features the window compositor might decide to have. They might as well be asking all app developers to add a “fullscreen” button to the decoration, or a “sticky” button, or a “roll up”/“shade” button like many old school X11 WM used to have. This would lead to apps lagging behind in terms of what they have implemented support for and resulting in inconsistent UX, and at the same time limiting the flexibility and user customization of the decorations, not just in terms of visuals but also function and behavior.